This riff was prompted by a Red Room request for writers to blog about their obsessions.
Writers are supposed to be obsessed. Obsessed with words. Images. Dreams. The brush of silky wind across their inner arms, their thighs. The last light on leaves. The pokeberries hanging from their brances out side my window, pendants ripe for the picking, beckoning to be put in a poem about late summer in the South.
But first I have to clean up the barf one of my four dogs just left at my feet. It happened while I was talking to my mother on the phone, reassuring her that I'm still alive, and will remain so, even though my husband will be gone for another night of looking after his ill father. My mother is obsessed with my safety. I am obsessed with all the dog fur that has gathered on my carpet over the last 24 hours.
I barely have time to look out the window at the pokeberries or the morning-glories. I am busy cleaning up after dogs. And when I'm not, I'm cleaning up after making sauerkraut, pickling beets and cucumbers, stewing tomatoes, canning jams. Or pulling weeds. My writer's hands? Dirt under the fingernails. When I reach for a ball-point, it's to write another reminder on my to-do list.
My house smells of dogs, vinegar, and cabbage. My bedroom is littered with recipes. My garden calls me out each morning to see what damage my rampaging dog-pack has wrought. I spend my day obsessing over what else I can save from rot and decay, the tomatoes leaking all over the counter. The peaches growing soggy as beer-soaked sponges. I want to save every last cabbage leaf, every plume of chard, every spike of okra. It's August in the rural South. Isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing? Seizing the day, like any time-obsessed poet? Stroking butternuts like words. Chewing on Red Russian Kale as if it's my best poem.
At night I search Pet-Finder online for dogs to save. I don't need any more. Neither does my garden. But a poet can always dream, can't she?
6 comments:
All too true -- sometimes you're too busy living the poem to write about it.
(Now I need to go deal with those maters.)
that is one serious cabbage :)
until last night i had gone a week without even attempting to write a poem.
sometimes we just need a break into reality don't we!
Hi Vicki and Jessie, right now my life is so crammed with food that needs to be looked after that I can't imagine reading or writing. No maters, though. And, of course, the dogs, always playing musical food bowls. And shedding, shedding, shedding. We did get our big Bro shaved, however. It's changed his life!
P.s., we are serious about our cabbage! But as I commented in the preceding, I need compelling cabbage recipes. Compelling cabbage. I've always loved alliteration.
Hi Kay, I haven't written much lately either. Oh, I've been to readings and networked and blogged, and now I'm going to my son's for dinner. But we write when we are full of life, and the words want to spill out, which is just a poetic way of saying, if we don't do anything, what on earth will we write about? LOL
I can relate to the shedding of dogs and I also have a cat that sheds. Never ends. I have been accused of "obsessing" over things and it was said as an accusation, but don't we all obsess about something. I obsessed about my husband's health for years, and before that I obsessed about my lack of housekeeping skills. I don't know what my next obsession will be but like Dead Mule says,We have to live life before we can write about it.
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